The NBA Playoffs Are Going On

Yes, believe it or not, Steve is actually posting again. I haven't written anything for the Times in over a month, but I'm hoping to change that in the near future. I didn't even make baseball picks this year, and it's probably too late now (Here's a hint: they would have been way off, I was higher on the White Sox coming into this season that I may ever have been, and look how horrible they are so far). Because of the White Sox underachieving, and the fact that I haven't had the chance to catch too many of their games this year because of the early starts for my time and being crazy busy at work, I've been focusing on the NBA and NHL playoffs. Well, at least I was focusing on the NHL playoffs until both my Blackhawks and Coyotes got beat in the first round. At least the Blackhawks put up a fight. Now all I want is for Detroit to lose.

Anyways, the NBA playoffs have definitely got my interest this year, because for the first time since I've needed to shave more than once a week the Chicago Bulls are actually a legit NBA title contender. Growing up, I was a little spoiled by the Bulls success (they won their first NBA title when I was 8 and last when I was 15) so I never got overly excited by their absolute dominance. I knew that as long as they had Michael Jordan they were going to be awesome, and I feel so lucky that I am able to tell my grandkids one day that I saw the greatest player of all time play in person. So finally, after 13 long years, the Bulls are back and have a shot at bringing Chicago it's 7th NBA title.

I'll admit I'm not a huge NBA fan but I think it's fun to watch now for kind of a nostalgia factor. I feel like the NBA was awesome at marketing to kids in the early 90's by making the star players of each team seem larger than life, just look at the success of NBA Jam with it's 2 on 2 style play. I think the formula is still being used and is being used well with a lot of good character players after a few years of not so media friendly players leading their teams. But to me, the best nostalgia factor is the Bulls being a good team lead by a star player. It reminds me of the good old days where Michael was the king of Chicago. Who doesn't remember this classic commercial?



And now, the Bulls finally have their star again. Derek Rose lead the Bulls to their first division title and #1 seed in the East since 1998 and just this week, became their first player since Air Jordan to win the MVP award. He seems to have the same will to win and determination that Jordan had, and he just seems to make everyone around him that much better. Doing a Youtube search for Rose commercials is not nearly as easy as Jordan, but hey, you have to start somewhere. There will be plenty more where this one came from, and maybe my kids will fondly look back at his commercials 30 years from now, too.



Go Bulls.

Improvements to Is It Sports? And Other Random Stuff

Originally posted on "Is It Sports?" by Steve. We had 500 hits on the old site! It's nice to see how far we've come. I think you can add about 2 zeros onto that number for the Victoria Times. Another Ironic thing about this post is that I mention having a greater selection of girls in the real world, and then I went on to meet my wife at Purdue of all places 6 months later when I came back to school for a visit with my some of my friends still there.

As you can see we made some changes to the Is It Sports? page to celebrate its 4 month anniversary today. We did the unthinkable and actually have so many posts on this site now that the main page has gotten overloaded and hard to find what you are looking for. To remedy this, we now have only the 5 most recent posts on the main page and the rest are archived by category below. We also have our nifty new internal search engine, which took me hours to figure out, courtesy of FreeFind.com. This way you can find a particular article on the site just by searching for any word that appears in it. You can also find out things like how many times we’ve said things like “in the junk” (3 times). The search engine gets a visit from the indexing spider every Sunday morning, so it will automatically stay up to date with the new posts. Enjoy and thanks for the support! Over 500 hits 4 months is pretty good for a modest geocities site.

On to the random stuff...

How ‘bout them White Sox?!? The wins just keep piling up and as of right now they have a 21-7 record and by far the best record in the majors. Wow. It makes my crazy homer pick in the season preview look pretty good right now. As Ryan said in his last post about baseball, sure, the pitching is pitching out of its mind right now, but they are also winning with almost nothing happening in the hitting category. Despite his 7 home runs, Paul Konerko is batting under .200 and Jermaine Dye hasn’t gotten it together at all this season. Tadahito Iguchi is leading the team in average, so hopefully he can keep it up. The Sox have been very good, however, at grinding out runs when it counts. Carl Everett and Juan Uribe lead the majors in sacrifice flies and the hit and runs and stolen bases they frequently use are producing runs despite the lack of singles. If you look at the White Sox history though, all of their best teams besides the 2000 division champs have played this way, so maybe history is repeating itself. The 1906 team wasn’t called the Hitless Wonders, the 1959 team wasn’t called the Go-Go Sox, and the 1983 team wasn’t called the Winning Ugly White Sox for nothing.

Da Bulls!...are on the brink of elimination, and I really regret not talking about them more on here during the remarkable season they had. It’s amazing how a team so young and with so much raw talent was able to put it all together after a rough start to the season and grab the 4th seed in the playoffs. That’s all I’ll say about them for now, but expect a 2004-2005 season tribute to the Baby Bulls from me after the playoffs are over.

My time here at Purdue has come to an end, and I don’t really know what to think of it yet. I took my last final on Tuesday, and now I just have to wait to get my grades and then later my diploma next week, making me a full fledged Mechanical Engineer. Now I have to go out in the real world and start working…which led me to think…what’s better? Purdue or the Real World? Here are the pros and cons of both:

Purdue
Pros: 1. Only a few hours of class a day 2. Surrounded by lots of good friends your age 3. Using reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger on TV as an excuse to get drunk 4.Being able to walk pretty much anywhere at any time safely 5. All of the fun parties, inside jokes, and traditions 6. Purdue’s Football team
Cons: 1. Lots of homework 2. Tests that make you feel like you haven’t learned anything 3. Bad Girl to Guy ratio, mostly only crazy girls left to pick from 4. Having to walk pretty much everywhere because parking sucks 5. Lafayette Drivers 6. Purdue’s Basketball team

Real World
Pros: 1. You get paid 2. No homework 3. 50-50 ratio, possibly decent girls available 4. Ample parking 5. New work friends and fellow apartment residents to meet 6. In my case, since I’m moving to Detroit, pro sports
Cons: 1. You have to work 8 hours a day 2. No summer vacation 3. All of your college friends are still in school or spread out across the country 4. More responsibilities to worry about 5. You could be half the age of your coworkers 6. The pro sports are Detroit pro sports.

So when it comes down to it, it’s kind of a wash. In college you have less responsibility and you can have more fun, but it has to come to an end sometime. For a goal driven person like me, I’m looking forward to the opportunity to get paid for my work and to find at least a half sane woman to start a family with one day, but I’ll always look back fondly at my days at Purdue. It was an experience that I wouldn't have traded for anything. Boiler Up! - Steve